..."Too bad you're not a dog, you could fetch me something." Cat licks his paw and says "If I were a dog, I woulda got hit by that car and killed last week, instead of hurtling it like the feline superhero I am. Then where would you be? By the way, the new food kind of sucks."

... heading in our direction, which is expected to dump beaucoup rain on the islands later this week -- but alas, the spouse and I will be in San Francisco, leaving Younger Daughter to fend for herself. Shouldn't be all that bad, and we can always use rain.

I'm heading off the the airport in a few minutes to catch my flight to Oakland. See you all later.

Why is it $150 cheaper to fly roundtrip to Oakland from Honolulu, than to fly roundtrip to San Francisco -- and on the same airline (Hawaiian), no less? We're saving over $300 in total by landing nine miles across the Bay, and Oakland's really a much easier airport to get in and out of ...

Sometimes, it's cheaper to go to SFO than OAK, and quite often, it's cheaper to fly to San Jose than the other two Bay Area airports (of course, SJC is also 60 miles from where I want to go ...)

I'm at a loss as to how they determine how much to charge and when. This week, it was $450 r/t to OAK, but $560 to SFO (summer's always more expensive to travel from Honolulu). Then in October, when I'm booked to go to Walnut Creek again, it's $390 to SFO and $438 to OAK. And sometimes on Hawaiian Airlines, it's even cheaper to split the trip by segment, i.e., arrive at one airport and leave from the other, which I've done on several occasions.

Computers don't have to be logical or sensible. That's how one time when I was looking to go to Oakland on United Airlines, the computer would've booked me from Honolulu to San Francisco, had me change planes to fly to Los Angeles, and then change planes again to fly back up to Oakland.

... it will be like in Walnut Creek? I bet it's going to be in the high 90s or low 100s, if you're going to be at 110 north of the city. It's always much warmer on the east side of the Bay than in San Francisco.

Could be much hotter there, but SF, Oakland and any bay huggin' city should be pleasant to slightly warm :) Tomorrow will be my 'hot' day @ 86, but it's all downhill for me after that :) I'll be bathing dogs tomorrow, and boy, do they need it!

has been "hot"...in the 80s. Whoa. Family complained about it at dinner last night. We sweated a little. Unfortunately for cool luvin me, I'll be in Chicago soon. Hear the hot spell has broken and it is only in the 90's. Gads. Plus we Portlanders are now not in the rainy season(s) and have to water plantings and containers. Wow, what a burden!

My poor late 80s parents in Chicago!...no power for days, horrid temps and a stoic attitude. I talked to my mom... "mom please just go to a hotel and you can cool off and charge your cell phone" and then I said that in caps (she is very hard of hearing.) And then I said it louder till she handed the phone to my dad who is stroke inpaired, but not hearing impaired, and I said PLEASE - JUST - GO - TO - A - HOTEL!!!!. He said "I can hear you."

must be drinking again, how is R.A. Dickey not starting for the NL All-Stars? He's only 12-1 with a 2.40 era. And I don't wanna hear any of this garbage about catching the knuckler, if you're an all-star catcher its about time you learned how.

is that, even if you are an "All-Star" catcher, it's not so easy to catch for a knuckle ball pitcher. Maybe La Russa didn't think that the All-Star game was the time to learn- it's not really easy, kdog, and not something that you can become expert in "on the fly," as it were. I think that La Russa is being smarter than you give him credit for. OTOH, the whole All-Star thing is a bunch of BS. The only reason that Major League Baseball decided to give the "home field advantage" to the league that wins the All-Star game in the World Series is to try and make the All-Star game at all relevant. Which is another whole load of BS.

of starting, period. Nothing against Cain, who is having a fine season, but hands down Dickey has been the NL's best.

Sure catching the knuckler is an adventure, but Larussa says Dickey will definitely take the hill, and none of the catchers on the NL roster have knuckleballer experience...so bringing Dickey in later accomplishes nothing, same risk of passed balls due to catcher inexperience. Better to have some passed balls early rather than late when the game could be on the line, no?

Totally with you on the game "counting", baseball fans can appreciate an exhibition of the games finest players in any given year, even in the age of Sportscenter. We don't need an extra incentive, though if the best players actually cracked the starting lineup, that would help. Yeah I'm talking about my man D-Wright too, but thats on the fans;)

That the manager has to think of the whole game in total, not just the stats of the starting guys. But really, who actually cares in the end about the results of the All-Star game? Nobody is even going to remember it in a few weeks. Dickey or Cain. Is either of them going to last more than a couple of innings? I think not. ;-)

Baseball All Star Game used to be a bigger deal back in the Golden Age (50s-70s) when the two leagues only squared off for that game plus the WS and players tended to stay much longer with one team (Reserve Clause). Also when Crazy Pete Rose was out there, anything was possible. It usually made for an entertaining game on tv.

retired. The starting managers for the All-Star game are the managers for the two teams who made it to the World Series in the previous year. The Cardinals won last year, before La Russa retired, so he gets the National League manager slot this year for the All-Star game.
In any case, there are a whole heck of a lot of starting position players in both leagues who are not necessarily the best choices. But, OTOH, while I think that baseball is very interesting, and the sport that I follow the most, I also realize that, in the grand scheme of things, sports are, at the end of the day, a game. Interesting, but does it really matter, when there are people in this country, and around the world, suffering? It's tremendously fun, but we need to get our priorities straight.

as Romney would put it, I've been doing less of it in recent years. First to go was MLB some years ago when the games went from a crisp two hours to about three and a half today. Plus all the obvious illicit juicing by the players and ridiculous million dollar salaries being paid light hitting utility fielders.

Next recently was the NBA. I'd been tuning in only at playoff time and for the Finals for years . This year, just a few playoff games and barely two finals games.

Only college and pro football remain as must see teevee from my old annual spectator habits, and we'll see how that goes what with the various controversies there.

Added Euro and WC soccer -- my new passion.

And the summer and winter Olympics still compel my attention, only not as much as my earlier years.

seeing as how the outcome does determine home field in the World Series. The idea is to pitch Cain (a fireballer) through the lineup the first couple innings, then give the ball to Dickey (to throw his slow junk) for a couple innings, then come back with someone like Strasburg (another fireballer).

The idea being to mess up the AL hitters' timing by whipsawing the kinds of pitches they're seeing and thereby gain a competitive advantage.

Not unlike how, for example, the Sawx would stick Wakefield between Pedro Martinez and some other fireballer when the Yankees were coming to town.

Back when the Red Sox were still relevant, of course. (This Yankee fan chuckles in a fit of schadenfreude.)

There's madness to his method and method to his madness. But behind it all, he wants to win.

But of the overpaid funds, most end up in the hands of three types of people: Those who aren't actively searching for a job, those who were fired or quit voluntarily, and those who continue to file claims even though they've returned to work. Any of those circumstances would make a person ineligible for benefits.

The overpayment typically results from an administrative error made either by the government, the employer, the worker or a combination of the three.

In much rarer situations, people deliberately defraud the system, using fake documents or identities. Common scams involve prison inmates, illegal immigrants or even the deceased.

One of those send money diaries was involved, maybe two...someone who went by The Aunt as well? They claimed that they had been cut off by their family because The Nephew had come out. Oh Dear, well no wonder people are upset. I sent money for Vetwife and family once, but her family is tied into the DKos Netroots for Troops group and one the administrators for the group was flying to help them. I don't just send money to people I don't know. Sent a bit to Jesse LaGreca too as he starts out his adventure into DKos radio, but once again have a little bit more to go on. He isn't exactly an unknown entity. Now I know why the community was so upset though.

I know that slinkerwink was stalked a bit too, I think it was just messages but she has been private about what it was and handling it. I follow both slinkerwink and nyceve though, have for a long time because they have done such good and credible work in the area of healthcare.

I don't understand everything that happened, but it seems that a diarist made friends and got personal info and then stalked others. I think I read one of the diaries and rec'd it, the author went by name The Nephew and he wrote about gay rights a lot I think. It wasn't that I didn't like the subject, I just thought that other writers there are better on the subject and I was already following them. I read the one diary and thought it was okay but did not follow, did see that writer on the rec list though a bit.

The diary about staying safe had some pretty good tips about how easy it could be to hack someone's computer, say like mine. Things that made sense after I read about them but would never have thought about. But we changed what my computer is named and passworded and such. Obvious things that I never thought about, but I'm not a hacker. The author who wrote the diary used to hack though way back in the day she says.

Independent voters are growing in numbers at the expense of Democrats in battleground states most likely to determine this year's presidential election, a Bloomberg News analysis shows.

The collective total of independents grew by about 443,000 in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina since the 2008 election, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from state election officials.

During the same time, Democrats saw a net decline of about 480,000 in those six states, while Republicans -- boosted in part by a competitive primary earlier this year -- added roughly 38,000 voters in them, the analysis shows.

"Democrats hit the high-water mark for registration in 2008, so it's natural that they are going to see some drop off," said Michelle Diggles, a senior policy analyst with the Democratic-leaning Third Way research group in Washington who conducted a similar study earlier this year.

The rise of independent voters has had a major impact on recent election results.

In 2008, President Barack Obama won 52 percent of the independent vote, according to national exit polls, which was one percentage less than his overall total. Senator John McCain of Arizona, his Republican opponent, collected 44 percent of the independent vote -- 2 points less than his overall total. Independents represented 29 percent of the total electorate that year.

SNIP

Independent voters are growing in numbers because of dissatisfaction with Republicans and Democrats, Diggles said.

"Independents are really just fed up with both parties," she said. "Most elections are about the center and that's where the swing vote is going to come from."

A Bloomberg survey taken June 15-18 showed 50 percent of independents view the Republican Party unfavorably, while 47 percent say that about the Democratic Party.

In both theory (platforms, groupings) & practice ( the $$$ people aka Big Donors, ideological base hold) it is unrealistic to ignore today's reality that it may have nothing to do with the man or woman candidate. Funny thing: one of the earlier political science studies/polls discovered that mist people voting in the 1950s election featuring Eisenhower v Stevenson did so on the basis of one "individual" trait...I.e., Eisenhower's SMILE was identified as the winning, defining characteristic of voting "for the man.". Nah...I like to romanticize about the independent thought of the independent ; but, in fact, even recent studies corroborate what political science types learned early on that the typical independent is a low information voter.

the fact that the Democrats have actually lost people off their rolls and more people identify as independents is pretty telling. Especially when more people identified as Democrats in 2006 and 2008 - the Democrats won. When fewer people identified as Democrats in 2010 - guess what happened?

It isn't rocket science.

If things were going well, the number of Democrats would be high. It's telling that fewer and fewer are aligining as independents. That's a pretty good sign that they are going to need a lot of convincing to vote for Obama.

say a whole lot because the polls are very tight right now and frankly I don't expect them to change. A fact that you are ignoring is that the GOP brand is in the absolute garbage can. Actually I would think the chance of those voters sitting home would be a lot greater than them voting for Romney.

May be in the garbage can, but you don't address the fact that despite a barrage of spending and ads by Obama (almost $100 million in swing states) and his numbers have not moved in months and are below 50%.

why you have this obsessive need to make sure everyone knows and sees every negative poll, article, ad, comment that has anything to do with Obama and the Democrats: what is your freakin' point? Where are you hoping to go with this?

It's like, every day you get up determined that every negative comment about Romney and the Republicans is met with something negative about Obama and the Dems. To what end? Why is it always, "well, Romney/the GOP may be bad, but look at how bad Obama and the Dems are?" Do you ever consider just agreeing that Romney is awful? Because he is - and so is the GOP, which is mired in crazy.

So, who am I, someone extremely vocal about my problems with Obama and the Democrats, to criticize you for being negative about them, too? Because you don't seem to be negative about the Dems for their own sake, but only as a counter to the anti-GOP criticism. I'm not jumping on people with both feet for being negative about the GOP - I'm not making it my mission to be "fair and balanced" about these two candidates and these two parties.

This is why people accuse you of being a closet - or not-so-closet - Romney supporter; there's no way to balance the bad, there just isn't. And why would you want to - deliberately, or for some other reason - work so hard to mitigate the Republican BS?

is that to have a conversation, sometimes the cheerleaders who live in fantasy-land around here, need to have their bubbles burst a bit.

Do you ever consider just agreeing that Romney is awful? Because he is - and so is the GOP, which is mired in crazy.

Why do I need to state the obvious? To appease you or the cheerleaders? It's a given that he's awful - why beat that to death? This site is to discuss politics from a "left" perspective. Don't we assume the "the other guy is worse" from the start?

This is why people accuse you of being a closet - or not-so-closet - Romney supporter; there's no way to balance the bad, there just isn't. And why would you want to - deliberately, or for some other reason - work so hard to mitigate the Republican BS?

Yes - you found me out. (Rolls eyes). Congratulations on stating that trying to have a discussion by presenting alternative information makes one a supporter of the other side. (Rolls eyes again). Silliest comment ever.

Did you ever think all those people who don't worship at the altar of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al (not the lunatics on FOX News - but some just average people in the country) might actually have legitimate beefs with Democratic policies and messages and that's why this race is closer than it should be? I guess it's just easier to chalk it up to the fact that those people are racist / back woods / uneducated / crazy Evangelical / fill-in-the-blank voters and if they would just read the New York Times and watch Rachel Maddow, then they would see the light. (No, that's not patronizing or elitist at all).

Or do you think that maybe since the Dems have been in charge for a while now (Congress 2006-2010; White House 2008-) and people don't see their lives getting better, maybe, just maybe that's why they are looking to the other guy? How productive is whining about how "it's not our fault" or "the Republicans are being mean" when voters can't get a job or pay their mortgage? Do you think those people (many who voted for Obama in 2008) give a rat's a$$ whose fault this is or do you think they want to see some action that will improve their lives?

The cheerleaders on the left are just as boring as those on the right.

does not transform one into a "cheerleader." (As a matter of fact, if we want to talk about those in politics with a genuine cheerleading background, lets go back to George W. But I digress, almost.)

Look, I support the President. Openly, and with open argument. That is known as a political supporter. The fact that you might prefer Romney, in a not so indirect way, doesn't make you a "cheerleader." It would make you a supporter, who argues for your candidate with persuasion, clippings, what-have-you. The point: Can the disparaging "cheerleading" c$$p...it is nothing but a show of snit.

To be an open supporter of a candidate, btw, does not mean that there are areas of difference. Heck, I cannot think of one mortal in my lifetime (even ol' me) with whom I am always in total agreement. Yet, judging by the selective arguments--as Anne has alluded to & as I also read them--there does seem to be a disingenuous quality to your assumed stance of being the neutral or unbiased arbitor. If there is a political closet from which you speak, it may be so much more open & interesting if you would come out of it to become the effective, open political supporter that you could obviously be.

conversation a little differently: no one ever told me that bubble-bursting was one of the elements of good conversation.

But the thing is that you don't seem to really be interested in the conversation part as much as you are in the bubble-bursting part. Not that I haven't engaged in some bubble-bursting myself - ask ABG. I have never hesitated to counter his relentless cheerleading, but is ragging on Romney and the GOP the same as cheerleading for Dems?

Sometimes, sure. It sets my teeth on edge when Jeralyn or BTD spend an entire post discussing the evils of the GOP, throw in the obligatory acknowledgment that the Dems are almost as bad, and conclude with " but Obama and the Dems are clearly the only choice."

Did you ever think all those people who don't worship at the altar of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al (not the lunatics on FOX News - but some just average people in the country) might actually have legitimate beefs with Democratic policies and messages and that's why this race is closer than it should be?

Are we reading the same blog? I don't see the comments section here as being overflowing with Obama/Dem worshippers - for heaven's sake, jb, even BTD has chafed against and been irritated by the anti-Obama sentiment here. I don't think most of the commenters are under any illusions about why the race is so close, so this message you have might be better targeted at places like DKos or Booman, where Obama worship seems to be alive and well.

I guess it's just easier to chalk it up to the fact that those people are racist / back woods / uneducated / crazy Evangelical / fill-in-the-blank voters and if they would just read the New York Times and watch Rachel Maddow, then they would see the light. (No, that's not patronizing or elitist at all).

By "these people" do you mean those who do support the GOP? Do you really see that much elitism here? Because I don't. I see people who know that if Fox News is the only place one is getting their news, they aren't getting the whole story - but I also see people who know that is true about the so-called liberal media.

Or do you think that maybe since the Dems have been in charge for a while now (Congress 2006-2010; White House 2008-) and people don't see their lives getting better, maybe, just maybe that's why they are looking to the other guy?

Do you want them to look to the other guy? Because what I see here are a lot of people who supported Dems because they wanted their lives to get better, who see that it hasn't happened, and are now utterly frustrated because they know there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that the other guy is going to turn things around. People are angry because they feel they don't have choices, and realize they are going to get screwed no matter who's in the White House.

How productive is whining about how "it's not our fault" or "the Republicans are being mean" when voters can't get a job or pay their mortgage? Do you think those people (many who voted for Obama in 2008) give a rat's a$$ whose fault this is or do you think they want to see some action that will improve their lives?

With a few exceptions, I don't see anyone doing much of that here, and among those who aren't making excuses, I don't see anyone arguing that as bad as things may be, Republicans and Mitt Romney are a credible alternative for getting things turned around.

The cheerleaders on the left are just as boring as those on the right.

Again, are we reading the same blog? I think a blog where there is a actually a lot of cheerleading, rejection of reality, and excuse-making going on would be more fertile ground for your back-to-reality program.

Do you want them to look to the other guy? Because what I see here are a lot of people who supported Dems because they wanted their lives to get better, who see that it hasn't happened, and are now utterly frustrated because they know there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that the other guy is going to turn things around. People are angry because they feel they don't have choices, and realize they are going to get screwed no matter who's in the White House.

But I am tired of the "but the other guy is worse".

Do you really see that much elitism here? Because I don't.

Absoltuely. Sometimes. Not from the same commenters every day, but yes, there are occasional snarky comments that come off as elitist and close-mided, and really make my eyes roll.

that pretty much backs up my assumption that I don't expect things to change for quite a while. People are probably not paying that much attention right now and there's a certain set of voters that are going to vote for Obama or Romney no matter what the ads say.

Has info strongly supportive of the notion that you suggest about motivation to vote for Romney. The WP found that the discrepancy was marked with most people identified as Obama supporters were so inclined because they were FOR Obama and with Romney supporters basing their decision on being AGAINST the President. The ramifications are fascinating...and the Post notes that the 2004 race had a similar characteristic with supporters of Kerry often united by their dislike of Bush.

As a matter of fact, the details of the Post survey are interesting in that after showing a tie of registered voters as to President or Challenger, all personal characteristics break heavily in Obama's favor (even the economics area is even.). The latter situation may be leading to an emerging pundit point that the election is becoming something more than a referendum on the President...that the second step confronts Romney who himself hasn't yet been able to reach the acceptable level in the general phase (a lot of that , it is starting to be said, stems from the astute use of ad money in "defining" Romney.)

Following the 2008 election wher many more than expected signed up as Dems. at least, a Denver Post report in the past year notes that a number of Repubs had left their party in Colorado to become independents while a number of Colorado Independents becalm new Dems...as the cycle moved on the numbers reverted more to the normal distribution existing prior to 2008. Independents continued to enlarge somewhat, as has been the trend in most states.